scholarly journals Assessing the Health of the Dark Web:

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-134
Author(s):  
Samuel Onyango ◽  
Emilie Steenvoorden ◽  
Joram Scholten ◽  
Slinger Jansen

AbstractA hidden part of the World Wide Web is known as the Dark Web, featuring websites that cannot be indexed by traditional search engines. Many open source software products are used to access and navigate through the Dark Web. Together they form the Dark Web open source software ecosystem. Research on this ecosystem is scarce and research on the ecosystem health is non-existent, even though ecosystem health is an useful indicator of the livelihood of an ecosystem. The goal of this research is to evaluate the health of the ecosystem through an assessment of Tor, I2P and GitHub. The Open Source Ecosystem Health Operationalization framework is used to help perform this assessment. Eight metrics from the framework are selected, which are measured using the data collected. Analysis of Tor and I2P metrics suggest that there has been an increase in Tor and I2P user activity in the recent past. Added knowledge, spin offs and forks and usage indicate active participation and interest in Tor and I2P. There has also been an increase in the number of active GitHub Dark Web projects. However, these GitHub projects are not well-connected and only a small number of projects have a large number of contributors. There is some variety among the GitHub software projects. The framework proves to be adequately capable of determining the health of the Dark Web open source ecosystem with the available data.

Author(s):  
Patrick A Gray ◽  
Bo Sandén ◽  
Phillip Laplante

A way to measure the complexity of object-oriented software involves topological features of the code's hierarchical organization at the method, class, package, and component levels. Sangwan et al (2008) suggested that as certain software products evolve, this complexity shifts from lower to higher structural levels, or vice-versa. They studied three widely used open source software programs and showed that these structural shifts called “epochs” were present and suspected that this phenomenon was pervasive. To support or refute this assertion, 30 open source programs were studied and structural shifts in complexity were found significantly in 27 of them. In those projects where no complexity shift was evident, no refactoring had occurred. These findings further suggest that in large, open source software projects, when refactoring occurs a shifting in complexity from one level to another will occur.


Author(s):  
Donald Wynn Jr.

This study examines the concept of an ecosystem as originated in the field of ecology and applied to open source software projects. Additionally, a framework for assessing the three dimensions of ecosystem health is defined and explained using examples from a specific open source ecosystem. The conceptual framework is explained in the context of a case study for a sponsored open source ecosystem. The framework and case study highlight a number of characteristics and aspects of these ecosystems which can be evaluated by existing and potential members to gauge the health and sustainability of open source projects and the products and services they produce.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (7) ◽  
pp. 1273-1278
Author(s):  
H.A. Moruf ◽  
S. Sani ◽  
Z.I. Abu

The explosion of the World Wide Web; dynamic nature of information technologies, such as open source; the increase in electronic resources; and the rising expectations of library users have contributed to the changing nature of the Automated Library System (ALS) since its inception in the  1970s. These changes are reflected in the conceptual differences between the ALS and the Integrated Library System (ILS). The ALS is identified as simply a database to house and retrieve a library’s holdings while ILS is identified as robust clusters of systems involving every process and module related to library operations. This article presents a review on the evolving features of some commonly adopted Open-Source ILS Software (Koha, NewGenLib, Evergreen, PMB and OpenBiblio) which had stirred ALS to ILS, as well as justifications and barriers to the use of open source software in academic libraries. Keywords: Automation, integrated library system, library, software


Symmetry ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhifang Liao ◽  
Ningwei Wang ◽  
Shengzong Liu ◽  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Hui Liu ◽  
...  

In recent years, open-source software (OSS) development has grown, with many developers around the world working on different OSS projects. A variety of open-source software ecosystems have emerged, for instance, GitHub, StackOverflow, and SourceForge. One of the most typical social-programming and code-hosting sites, GitHub, has amassed numerous open-source-software projects and developers in the same virtual collaboration platform. Since GitHub itself is a large open-source community, it hosts a collection of software projects that are developed together and coevolve. The great challenge here is how to identify the relationship between these projects, i.e., project relevance. Software-ecosystem identification is the basis of other studies in the ecosystem. Therefore, how to extract useful information in GitHub and identify software ecosystems is particularly important, and it is also a research area in symmetry. In this paper, a Topic-based Project Knowledge Metrics Framework (TPKMF) is proposed. By collecting the multisource dataset of an open-source ecosystem, project-relevance analysis of the open-source software is carried out on the basis of software-ecosystem identification. Then, we used our Spectral Clustering algorithm based on Core Project (CP-SC) to identify software-ecosystem projects and further identify software ecosystems. We verified that most software ecosystems usually contain a core software project, and most other projects are associated with it. Furthermore, we analyzed the characteristics of the ecosystem, and we also found that interactive information has greater impact on project relevance. Finally, we summarize the Topic-based Project Knowledge Metrics Framework.


Author(s):  
Stewart T. Fleming

The open source software movement exists as a loose collection of individuals, organizations, and philosophies roughly grouped under the intent of making software source code as widely available as possible (Raymond, 1998). While the movement as such can trace its roots back more than 30 years to the development of academic software, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and so forth, the popularization of the movement grew significantly from the mid-80s (Naughton, 2000).


2015 ◽  
pp. 1343-1355
Author(s):  
Sebastian von Engelhardt ◽  
Andreas Freytag ◽  
Christoph Schulz

This article contributes to research on the geographic origin of open source software (OSS) developers by analyzing the geographic allocation of active OSS developers and OSS activities. Based on data from the SourceForge Research Data Archive, the authors exploit information about developers' IP address, email address, and indicated time-zone. This enables them to assign 94% of all registered users in 2006. As proxy for activity the authors use information about the number of posted messages. Thus they provide a detailed picture of the world-wide allocation of OSS activities. Such country data about the supply-side of OSS is a valuable stock for both cross-country studies on OSS and country-specific research and policy advice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Coetzee ◽  
Ivana Ivánová ◽  
Helena Mitasova ◽  
Maria Brovelli

All over the world, organizations are increasingly considering the adoption of open source software and open data. In the geospatial domain, this is no different, and the last few decades have seen significant advances in this regard. We review the current state of open source geospatial software, focusing on the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) software ecosystem and its communities, as well as three kinds of open geospatial data (collaboratively contributed, authoritative and scientific). The current state confirms that openness has changed the way in which geospatial data are collected, processed, analyzed, and visualized. A perspective on future developments, informed by responses from professionals in key organizations in the global geospatial community, suggests that open source geospatial software and open geospatial data are likely to have an even more profound impact in the future.


Author(s):  
Huaiwei Yang ◽  
Shuang Liu ◽  
Lin Gui ◽  
Yongxin Zhao ◽  
Jun Sun ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Shinji Kobayashi ◽  
Luis Falcón ◽  
Hamish Fraser ◽  
Jørn Braa ◽  
Pamod Amarakoon ◽  
...  

Objectives: The emerging COVID-19 pandemic has caused one of the world’s worst health disasters compounded by social confusion with misinformation, the so-called “Infodemic”. In this paper, we discuss how open technology approaches - including data sharing, visualization, and tooling - can address the COVID-19 pandemic and infodemic. Methods: In response to the call for participation in the 2020 International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook theme issue on Medical Informatics and the Pandemic, the IMIA Open Source Working Group surveyed recent works related to the use of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) for this pandemic. Results: FLOSS health care projects including GNU Health, OpenMRS, DHIS2, and others, have responded from the early phase of this pandemic. Data related to COVID-19 have been published from health organizations all over the world. Civic Technology, and the collaborative work of FLOSS and open data groups were considered to support collective intelligence on approaches to managing the pandemic. Conclusion: FLOSS and open data have been effectively used to contribute to managing the COVID-19 pandemic, and open approaches to collaboration can improve trust in data.


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